What is a Gantt Chart?

Many people have never heard of a Gantt. Simply put, a Gantt chart is a visual view of tasks scheduled over time. Gantt charts are used for planning projects of all sizes and they are a useful way of showing what work is scheduled to be done on a specific day. They also help you view the start and end dates of a project in one simple view.

People used to have to plan on paper (imagine that!) or with colored blocks. Magnetic blocks and Legos™ became a popular Gantt planning tool prior to the advent of Gantt chart software, and there are even event exhibitions celebrating the evolution of the Gantt over time.

What is Gantt Chart Software?

Once computers introduced new ways of working, project managers found they could save time in creating and updating their Gantt charts. Gantt chart software, also called project planning, project management, or project scheduling software, was created to automate the process to support more advanced Gantt requirements like creating task dependencies, adding milestones or identifying the critical path of a project.

Many project managers traditionally used local desktop programs like Microsoft Project—and many still do. But today, Gantt chart software has moved online, enabling anyone to create shareable and collaborative Gantt charts and projects plans.

Desktop vs. Online Gantt Chart Software

Project management software has radically improved the way teams work. Desktop Gantt chart software is best suited for one manager who likes to plan project individually, without a need to easily share the plan. Similar to managing projects in Excel or even Word, desktop Gantt chart software offers one local version per user license.

It becomes hard to share large Gantt or plan file sizes without the enterprise integration of a sharing-hub like Sharepoint. Even with Sharepoint, other people you want to share the file with also require the desktop license of the planning software, which can further increase costs.

Online project management or Gantt chart software supports ease of sharing and collaborative project planning. Because the software is 100% online, anyone you invite can not only see your project plan, but update their tasks and attach files right to the tasks they’re working on. And the costs are dramatically less than the desktop versions, because there’s no costly server installations, integrations and associated license costs for each user.

Ultimately, most people find the decision to move online with your project planning & Gantt charts is a no brainer, since the productivity gains far outweigh the headaches of older desktop ways of working.

Who Uses a Gantt Chart?

Today, nearly everyone can use a Gantt chart to help them visualize their tasks. Because all the difficult work is now done by computer algorithms, anyone can just create a simple task list, add start and end dates, and the software does the work instantly of displaying your tasks over time.

Gantt Chart Users by Role

Gantt charts are effective tools for these roles:

Project Managers

General Managers

Team Leaders

Operations Managers

Scheduling managers

Work Managers

Marketing Managers

CEOs & CTOs

… and frankly anyone who wants an instant view of a project timeline.

It used to be that Gantt charts were the exclusive tool of formally trained project managers. These were people planning long-range projects, or waterfall projects, of all different types: construction, engineering, military, manufacturing, infrastructure, IT and more. Creating long task lists and complex schedules with lots of moving parts, required training in the art and science of task estimation, critical path analysis, baselining and so on.

While still considered the purview of project managers, today with the wide range of project management and Gantt chart software offerings, anyone might be found to be using Gantt charts online.

Gantt Chart Users by Team

Because of the collaborative nature of online Gantt chart applications, more and more teams use them to plan and track all kinds of work together. Gantt charts can be used by all kinds of teams, such as:

IT & Dev Teams

Project Management Teams

PMOs

Marketing Teams

Professional Services Teams

Engineering & Architectural Teams

Construction Teams

Manufacturing Teams

Product Development Teams

Remote Teams

Telecommunications Teams

Healthcare Teams

Public Works Teams

Oil & Gas Industry teams

Government Teams

Whereas a project used to have a single project manager leading a single team for a single project, now many people across the organization manage projects with multiple teams of people. And many of those people are working projects under different managers.

Today’s teams often need to plan tasks and manage resources in multiple projects across different teams, too. It’s important to make sure your Gantt chart tools can support resource management, workload management, and task management across projects.

The Benefits of Online Gantt Chart Software

Many people are used to creating task lists in Excel or other spreadsheet tools. They might have created a simple Gantt chart, like we have offered in this free template. This works fine when you’re creating a list of things for one person to view. When you want to add more people to the activity, then it becomes so much easier to create the Gantt chart online. Tasks update whenever anyone changes their % complete or adds a comment or attaches a file in real time.

The uses of a Gantt chart, as you can see by the sheer number of teams and roles who can benefit from using Gantt charts, are many. Here are just a few:

Plan & Schedule Projects

Plan & Schedule Tasks

Plan & Schedule Tasks across multiple projects

View Tasks Over Time

Plan in Sprints

Team Collaboration

Scheduling Teams’ Work

Determining Planned versus Actual Timelines on a Project

Must-Have Gantt Chart Software Features

While no two Gantt charts are the same, there are key features that you will need to get the most out of your Gantt:

Dependencies

These show which tasks are linked together. Links are shown with lines on the Gantt chart, and the arrow points to the task that comes next. Dependencies can be set up as start-to-finish, start-to-start, finish-to-finish or finish-to-start. Read more: Learn how to manage task dependencies.

Summary tasks

A summary task is a skinny ‘umbrella’ task above various individual tasks. It is a good way of grouping tasks together, especially as part of a project stage or phase. You can ‘roll up’ your tasks (in other words, hide them from view) so that only the summary task is shown. The summary task also displays the task progress with shading, so you can view the progress of all tasks underneath in that one bar.

Collaboration

A Gantt chart without collaboration is just a static plan. It’s a nice to have, but it isn’t helping you advance the work your team is doing. Be sure you can chat or comment around tasks to keep the workflow documented. Your team will then get alerts every time a task has been updated, so they know when new activity has occurred.

File Sharing

It’s important as you collaborate to also be able to attach files, images, videos or other notes to document the task progress and also to keep all the task information together. That way, you always know where to look to find the file related to the work you’re doing.

Planned vs. Actual Progress

This is represented in a couple different ways on the Gantt. Shading on the bar indicates how complete the planned work is. When the bar is totally shaded, the task is finished. You can also see just a view of the actual progress anytime in the settings.

There are two halves to most Gantt chart tools you see online today. On the left is a column or grid that lists task names and info. On the right, each task has a corresponding bar that runs horizontally. The bar starts on the date that the work is scheduled to start. The longer the bar, the longer the task will take.

How to Create a Gantt Chart in ProjectManager.com

It’s easy for anyone to create a Gantt chart online in ProjectManager.com. You can import a task list, or create one from scratch, and instantly watch as your Gantt bars populate.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an online Gantt chart with ProjectManager.com:

1. Create a new project.

When you first log in, you simply enter in a project name and select “Create”.

2. Add tasks.

As you add tasks, the default date will be today, and since you haven’t added a longer due date than today, the tasks appear in the Gantt chart to the right as circles, representing that they start and end today. The dotted line represents today’s date.

3. Add due dates.

As you extend the dates, the bars on the Gantt extend too, showing you how long each task will take.

How to Use a Gantt Chart to Collaborate with Your Team

Despite the rumors, it’s easy to onboard your team with most online project management tools. Once you have invited your team to the new tool, you can start improving task management in a couple of different ways. You can coordinate a group call to build out the project together, right on the Gantt chart itself. Or, you can pre-populate the list of tasks into the Gantt, either with an easy import function or cutting and pasting the list, so the tasks and assignments are already populated when your team hopes on a call.

Here’s how you can easily start collaborating with your team:

1. Assign team members to tasks

You can easily assign or re-assign tasks to people based on their availability. When people are assigned to tasks, their name appears above the task bar on the Gantt.

2. Customize Gantt Chart

You can customize your Gantt chart in whatever way suits your team. Here, you can see that different people are represented by different colors on the Gantt, so it’s easy to see at a glance, who is responsible for which tasks. Others might use colors to represent different phases of a project or different teams responsible for a group of tasks.

3. Attach Files, Comments or Notes

When your team works collaboratively on a Gantt chart, you can do so much more than just plan tasks. You can add images, videos, links, notes or comments right at the task-level, so all the relevant task work is captured and easily accessible in one place.

4. Get Email Alerts

Your team can customize email alerts in a way that works for them. That way, whenever their tasks have been updated on the Gantt or anywhere else in the system, your team is instantly alerted to that change.

5. See What’s New

All the updates on the Gantt can be seen in one view on your Activity page. You can see what the team is working on and when tasks have been updated. Collaboration is easy with online Gantt charts.

For more tips on how to use a Gantt chart, check out our project management expert Devin Deen in this video.

How to Set up Advanced Features in Your Gantt Chart

Gantt Chart Columns

The most common Gantt chart columns are:

Task name: Unsurprisingly, this is a description of the task.

Planned start date: This is the date that you aim to start working on the task.

Planned duration: This is a single number that reflects how many days there are between the planned start date and the planned finish date. It’s based on working days, so if a task is planned to take a week it will reflect 5 (working) days.

Planned effort: How many hours of work the task will take within the duration. Think about painting a wall. It might only take you an hour to paint the first coat but then you’ve got to leave it two hours to dry before the next coat. Then you paint again and leave it to dry again. That’s only two hours of actual painting (effort) but six hours in total (duration).

Percent complete: A figure, mostly always based on an educated guess by the person doing the task, of how much work they have done and how much is still to do

Pro Tip: Beware of tasks that stay at 80% complete for too long. This is a sign that the task owner doesn’t really know how much work there is still to do. When you ask for updates, the percent complete should move up each time unless no work has genuinely taken place. Monitoring percent complete is a good way to get an early warning about tasks that might run late.

Assigned: This column tells you the name of the person, people, or resource type (e.g. Developer) who has been allocated to work on the task. At the start of the project you may only have resource type but as you go through you should be able to replace this with the names of actual team members.

Dependencies: You can also show the task dependencies in number form. Choose the “Linked From” column in the column settings. This is often an easier way of quickly finding out which task links where. Use the numbers in this column to track back the task dependencies – it can be faster than trying to trace a spidery line on the Gantt chart.

Still not sure about creating links between tasks? Our project management expert, Jennifer Bridges, PMP, explains it all in this video:

These are the most common ones but you can also set your Gantt chart columns to show you virtually anything you want including actual start and finished dates, planned and actual cost and Work Breakdown Structure numbering.

How to Import Gantt Chart Excel Templates

If you’ve been using Excel to create Gantt charts from templates, it might be daunting to let go of that work to switch to online tools. It’s easy to import Excel task lists into online tools to instant populate the online Gantt chart.

1. Find the file you want to import.

2. Click “Import.”

It’s easiest if you match columns in your file with the destination files. The software will help you do this. Use our handy downloadable excel template in the popup window to easily map your columns. Or when you upload your own files with custom columns, the software will guide you to map your columns.

3. See your tasks represented on the Gantt.

The Gantt auto-populates based on the dates you have added on your tasks. If there are no due dates, then the Gantt will populate with small dots. Simply click on a task bubble and drag to extend its due date on the Gantt. Just like that you’re scheduling your project online!

Online Gantt Chart FAQs

Why is it called a “Gantt” chart?

The Gantt chart was named after Henry Gantt, and many think he was the one who first had the idea of project planning on bar charts. Well, that’s not entirely true.

Left: Henry Gantt | Right: Karol Adamiecki

Karol Adamiecki devised the first “Gantt” chart, back in 1896. He was a Polish engineer turned management professor who came up with the idea of displaying processes visually so that he could make it easier to see production schedules. (He did most of his work in the steel industry.) He called it the harmonogram (a much better word) but he published his articles on it in Polish and Russian, so the English-speaking world didn’t know much about it.

Henry Gantt had the same idea, but about 15 years later. In 1910, Gantt started planning visually with bar charts to allow supervisors in the steel works to see if production was on track or behind schedule. It was Gantt’s name that got attached to this way of planning, but today it’s generally recognized that Adamiecki had the idea first.

How Does the Gantt Know When the Team is Working?

Planned duration and effort, and the overall start and finish times take working time into account.

The Gantt chart software pulls working time information from the resource working hours that you set. This gives you the option to change the available working time for each team member, which can be handy if you have people who aren’t able to work the standard 8-hour day exclusively on your project. You can also change working time for everyone, for example if you’re closing the office for a staff event or want to make sure that no one is scheduled to work on a bank holiday.

ProjectManager.com’s Dashboard

Is Online Gantt Chart Software Secure?

Many people debating the pros and cons of online versus desktop Gantt chart software wonder about the security of online project plans. Rest assured, most companies offer bank-level security and encryption with online project management software and have multiple security protocols in place to secure data and data recovery. For more information about security at ProjectManager.com, visit our Security page.

Can I Link Tasks to Risks and Issues?

Yes. You can link tasks to risks, issues and changes which makes it easy to navigate in the software and to highlight when a potential problem might need your attention. You can set up columns to display linked tasks and risks with one click.

Can I Customize my Gantt Chart?

There are many ways to customize the ProjectManager.com Gantt chart to suit your way of working. If you don’t want all the default options to show – or if you want even more options on display, navigate to the Gantt chart settings of your project management software and select what you want to see.

One of the easiest and most common things to fiddle with is the division of time that is displayed on the Gantt chart. There are two ‘levels’ of time displayed, normally the week and then the day. You can change the top tier to show weeks, months, quarters or even years and make the lower tier reflect the smaller division of time.

You can also color-code tasks, shade out non-working time and personalize other elements to differentiate by team, phase or anything else you want.

How do I print a Gantt Chart?

With care! Gantt charts are often difficult to print because they stretch horizontally over several pages. You used to often see project schedules printed and taped together then hung on the wall, but today most teams try to save the paper and work as far as possible online.

Of course, sometimes you’ll need to print out your Gantt chart, or at least a summary of it. Here are 5 tips:

Print it all on one page if possible. If that makes the text too small to read then…

…Change the time divisions so you contract the overall timeline (and therefore size) as much as possible. For example, if your display is set to show every day, change it so that the time slots shown are weekly or even monthly. That will make the bar chart part of the Gantt much shorter, so it doesn’t print on so many pages.

Roll up your tasks, especially if they are already complete.

Use print preview: it’s annoying to print a lot of pages and then realize you made a mistake! Check it out first.

Print page numbers if you can, so that you can put the Gantt chart together again if it is on several pages.

The best way to get comfortable using a Gantt chart is to actually create one. Create a project in your scheduling software and play around with it. Practice using the different settings to see which columns give you the information that you want. Your test project file is also handy if you want to try out a new feature or view before you try it on a ‘real’ project schedule.

The more you use Gantt charts, the easier they will become and the more confident you’ll get at using them.